Accumulated profits at the touring firm owned by one of the country’s most popular artists, singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy, last year surged to €4.44 million.

This follows Kennedy’s Riggins Touring Ltd recording post-tax profits of €2 million for the 12 months to the end of June last.

The €2 million profits for the year are an increase of 15.5 per cent on the post-tax profits of €1.76 million for the prior year.

Best known for hit tunes such as ‘Giants’, ‘Paradise’, ‘Better Days’ and ‘Outnumbered’, Kennedy was one of the big hits of the 2023 Glastonbury music festival last June in England.

The 32-year-old Rathcoole native also last year played to 155,000 people last summer over five shows, with three at Thomond Park in Limerick and two shows at Marlay Park in Dublin.

Speaking earlier this year on the sell-out appeal of Dermot Kennedy, the boss of MCD, Denis Desmond said that Kennedy selling 155,000 tickets in Ireland in 2023 was “huge”.

As part of an extensive tour of the US, Kennedy also played Madison Square Garden in New York City and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado in May and June 2023.

The hectic touring this year followed Kennedy releasing his second studio album, Sonder, in November 2022.

Underlining the company’s buoyant 2023, the accounts show that the company’s cash funds increased sharply from €1.67 million to €2.77 million while monies owed to the firm by debtors more than doubled from €2.67 million to €5.7 million.

In March, Kennedy released new music with a new EP entitled ‘I’ve Told The Trees Everything’ and separate accounts for Kennedy’s Riggins Recordings Ltd show that the company’s balance sheet received a major boost with the addition of €7.9 million under the heading of intangible assets.

This resulted in the company’s shareholder funds increasing more than seven-fold from €1.17 million to €10.2 million at the end of June last.

Kennedy’s popularity has reached new levels following his initial break-through when he took the No 1 slot in both the Official Irish singles and album charts with ‘Giants’ and ‘Without Fear’.

Since the release of his 2017 EP ‘Doves and Ravens’, Dermot Kennedy’s career has gone from strength to strength.

Kennedy’s debut album, Without Fear, achieved multi-platinum status with top 10 single, ‘Outnumbered’ as well as hit tunes, ‘Power Over Me’ and  ‘Giants’.

Kennedy has won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Song of the year for 2021 for his song, ‘Better Days’.